thechoochlyman
Vendor , w/Business number
This is my friend's car that I've been helping him along with - 2003 Jetta wagon auto. He said that his MPG dropped significantly in the last few months starting after he changed the fuel filter (going from about 45 to 35). Coincidence or not, I had him order a new filter from ID Parts, and he's going to install it soon. Drained the old one with no luck. According to VCDS the only fault code he has is for a glow plug. I also lowered the IQ value because it was sitting around 5.3.
I think his cat is stopped up. Power goes to crap once it's over a certain RPM, but has plenty of low end. The car has ~240k miles, and the exhaust looks like it has been cobbled up somewhat before. He doesn't have a lot of money to spend, but I wanted to see what else I could check before he spends money getting the exhaust worked on.
He did go to an exhaust shop to have them cut off the cat and stick in a test pipe to see if it improved things, but all they did was check it was an infrared thermometer and tell him it was fine because the cat was no hotter than the rest of the piping. I think that's a very unreliable way to tell if it's clogged, personally.
Sorry if this question has been asked at length... I didn't find a sticky or any satisfactory answers with a search.
I think his cat is stopped up. Power goes to crap once it's over a certain RPM, but has plenty of low end. The car has ~240k miles, and the exhaust looks like it has been cobbled up somewhat before. He doesn't have a lot of money to spend, but I wanted to see what else I could check before he spends money getting the exhaust worked on.
He did go to an exhaust shop to have them cut off the cat and stick in a test pipe to see if it improved things, but all they did was check it was an infrared thermometer and tell him it was fine because the cat was no hotter than the rest of the piping. I think that's a very unreliable way to tell if it's clogged, personally.
Sorry if this question has been asked at length... I didn't find a sticky or any satisfactory answers with a search.